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strict precautions should. be taken against fraud in the quality of goods sold to them; and that all differences between the two nations should be adjudged by twelve men, six of each. And he declares his intention "to leave myself and my successors no power of doing mischief; that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country."

This constitution, as originally organised by Penn, consisted, says Mr. Clarkson, "of a Governor, a Council, and an Assembly; the two last of which were to be chosen by, and therefore to be the representatives of, the people. The Governor was to be perpetual be perpetual President, but he was to have but a treble vote. It was the office of the Council to prepare and propose bills, to see that the laws were executed, to take care of the peace and safety of the province, to settle the situation of ports, cities, market-towns, roads, and other public places, to inspect the public treasury, to erect courts of justice, to institute schools for the virtuous education of youth, and to reward the authors. of useful discovery. Not less than twothirds of these were necessary to make a quorum, and the consent of not less than two-thirds of such quorum in all matters of moment. The Assembly were to have no deliberative power, but when bills were brought to them from the Governor and Council, were to pass or reject them by a plain Yes or No. They were to present Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace to the Governor; a double number, for his choice of half. They were to be chosen annually, and to be chosen by secret ballot." This groundwork was modified by Penn himself at later periods, and especially by removing that restriction which forbade the Assembly to debate or originate bills; and it was this, substantially, which Burke, in his "Account of the European settlements in America," describes as "that noble charter of privileges, by which he made

them as free as any people in the world, and which has since drawn such vast numbers of so many different persuasions and such various countries to put themselves under the protection of his laws. He made the most perfect freedom, both religious and civil, the basis of his establishment; and this has done more towards the settling of the province, and towards the settling of it in a strong and permanent manner, than the wisest regulations could have done on any other plan."

In 1682 a number of settlers, principally Quakers, having been already sent out, Penn himself embarked for Pennsylvania, leaving his wife and children. in England. He landed on the banks of the Delaware in October, and summoned an assembly of the freemen of the province, who agreed to his proposed constitution.

Penn thought that as the land belonged to the Indians, he ought not to take it from them. He accordingly bought it from them, and a strict league of amity was established with them.

Well and faithfully was the treaty of friendship kept by the wild denizens of the woods. "A friendship," says Proud, the historian of Pennsylvania, “which for the space of more than seventy years was never interrupted, or so long as the Quakers retained power in the government."

Penn remained in America until the middle of 1684. During this time much was done towards bringing the colony into prosperity and order. Twenty townships were established, containing upwards of seven thousand Europeans; magistrates were appointed; representatives, as prescribed by the constitution, were chosen, and the necessary public business transacted. In 1683 Penn undertook a journey of discovery into the interior; and he has given an interesting account of the country in its wild state, in a letter written home to the Society of Free Traders to Pennsylvania.

He held frequent conferences with the Indians, and contracted treaties of friendship with nineteen distinct tribes. His reasons for returning to England appear to have been twofold; partly the desire to settle a dispute between himself and Lord Baltimore, concerning the boundary of their provinces, but chiefly the hope of being able, by his personal influence, to lighten the sufferings and ameliorate the treatment of the Quakers in England. He reached England in October, 1684.

sence.

The affairs of Pennsylvania fell into some confusion during Penn's long abEven in the peaceable sect of Quakers there were ambitious, bustling, and selfish men; and Penn was not satisfied with the conduct either of the Representative Assembly, or of those to whom he had delegated his own powers. He changed the latter two or three times, without effecting the restoration of harmony; and these troubles gave a pretext for depriving him of his powers as governor, in 1693. But he was reinstated in August, 1694, by a royal order, in which it was complimentarily expressed that the disorders complained of were produced entirely by his absence. Anxious as he was to return, he did not find an opportunity till 1699; the interval was chiefly employed in religious travel through England and Ireland, and in the labour of controversial writing, from which he seldom had a long respite. His course as a philanthropist on his return to America is honourably marked by an endeavour to ameliorate the condition of negro slaves. The society of Quakers in Pennsylvania had already come to a resolution, that the buying, selling, and holding men in slavery was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian religion; and following up this honourable declaration, Penn had no difficulty in obtaining for them free admission into the regular meetings

for religious worship, and in procuring that other meetings should be holden for their particular benefit. The Quakers therefore merit our respect as the earliest, as well as some of the most zealous emancipators. Mr. Clarkson says, "When Penn procured the insertion of this resolution in the Monthly Meeting book of Philadelphia, he sealed as assuredly and effectually the abolition of the slave trade, and the emancipation of the negroes within his own province, as when he procured the insertion of the minute relating to the Indians in the same book he sealed the civilisation of the latter; for, from the time the subject became incorporated into the discipline of the Quakers, they never lost sight of it. Several of them began to refuse to purchase negroes at all; and others to emancipate those which they had in their possession, and this of their own accord, and purely from the motives of religion; till at length it became a law of the society that no member could be concerned, directly or indirectly, either in buying and selling, or in holding them in bondage; and this law was carried so completely into effect, that in the year 1780, dispersed as the society was over a vast tract of country, there was not a single negro as a slave in the possession of an acknowledged Quaker. This example, soon after it had begun, was followed by others of other religious denominations.

Penn returned to England in 1701, and he never again saw the colony for which he had laboured so strenuously. But his work was accomplished. This State was henceforth to be one of the most important of the American system, and all succeeding generations of Americans were to mention his name with something of that reverent respect with which they mentioned the name of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the other founders of their mighty nation.

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and as a man of such universal benevolence that two famous poets, Thomson and Pope, vied with each other in dedicating verses to his praise, was born in London in 1698, and died at Cranham Hall, in Essex, the country seat of his wife's father, in 1785. Although some modern littérateurs of the superfine type have long affected to hold the eighteenth century up to scorn as producing nothing but Philistines, we doubt whether its successor can exhibit three more useful, meritorious, and 'good all-round men' than James Edward Oglethorpe, Benjamin Franklin, and Benjamin Thompson, commonly called 'Count Rumford.' Confining ourselves to the first of the three, we shall find more than enough in the life of General Oglethorpe to engage our attention. On Monday, the 12th of February, 1883, Savannah, in Georgia, celebrated the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding, in 1732, of the British colony, or, as it was then called, 'plantation,' which Colonel Oglethorpe sailed up the Savannah River to establish. Nothing, indeed, can be more interesting, or more provocative of goodwill between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon family, resident, one of them in the Eastern and the other in the Western Hemisphere, than that the foundation long ago by Englishmen of American colonies which are now proud States of the Union should be celebrated far and wide. At a complimentary dinner given in New York to Sir Edward Archibald, who for twenty-five years had discharged the onerous duties of British Consul at the greatest port of the New World, it was claimed by one distinguished American speaker that, in a higher degree than commerce, selfinterest, or official diplomacy, English literature had brought about the good understanding now happily prevailing between the two nations. Far be it from us to undervalue the high and harmonising influences exercised by Shakespeare and Milton, by Pope and Byron,

by Washington Irving, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, by Dickens and Thackeray upon readers and thinkers resident on either side of the Atlantic. Is it not, however, a still stronger tie that from Maine to Florida no colonisers were more successful, none took hold of the new country more firmly than those hailing from these islands? Among the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard of what is now the United States, the English wrote their names in deeper and more permanent characters than the Dutch, the French, or the Spaniards.

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Readers of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' can hardly have forgotten that General Oglethorpe's pure, manly, and disinterested character produced a great impression upon the Sage.' The author of 'Rasselas' offered, indeed, to write Oglethorpe's life if materials were supplied to him, and was much flattered by the praise that the General bestowed upon his noble poem, London,' which was a rhymed adaptation or version of Juvenal's third satire. Such lives, however, as that of Oglethorpe are little likely to be written, for the heroes of them are never known to keep a diary. What would we not give, for instance, for authentic and contemporary lives of Sir Walter Raleigh, of Frobisher, Hawkins, and Drake, taken down from their own lips? The man of action and the man of letters are seldom united in the same person; and with all his taste for literature-a taste which seems to have been very judicious and discriminating-Oglethorpe is still, and will always remain, something of a mystery to his admirers upon both sides of the Atlantic. A few particulars, at any rate, are known about him. Having, as we have already said, been born in the parish of St. James, in 1698, and after completing his education at Oxford, he was gazetted to the Queen's Foot Guards in 1714. He made several campaigns on the Continent with Prince Eugene and Marlborough, and having returned,

when the wars were over, to his native land, he was elected as Member for Haslemere in 1722, and retained his seat until 1747. Anticipating the humane labours of John Howard and Caroline Fry, it was the earnest endeavour of Oglethorpe, so long ago as 1728, to draw general attention to the horrors endured by prisoners incarcerated within those centres of suffering, misery, oppression, disease, and want, the gaols of the metropolis. He was, in fact, one of the first of that noble band which was subsequently enriched by the names of Tuke, Clarkson, Granville Sharp, Wilberforce, Fowell Buxton, Cowper the poet, Sir Samuel Romilly, and many more who had hearts humane enough and consciences sensitive enough to feel for human misery under whatever form and in whatever country it was found. Few more discreditable chapters exist in the eventful and often splendid history of Great Britain than that which reveals the determined and mercenary efforts of our forefathers to maintain the slave trade because it was profitable. It is related that some sixty years since the

once celebrated actor George Frederick Cooke was performing at Liverpool. One night he went upon the stage disguised in liquor, and could not without difficulty get through his part. Upon his appearance next night the gods' eagerly clamoured for an apology. 'An apology from George Frederick Cooke!' he indignantly ejaculated. Take it, then, with the addition that there is not one brick in your town which is not cemented with the blood of a slave.'

When Oglethorpe sailed up the Savannah river, and landed on February 12, 1732, at the spot where the beautiful southern city of Savannah now stands, his first proclamation contained the promise that every one, whatever might be his colour-white, black, red, or yellow-who joined his colony should be absolutely free. About that time

England had concluded her infamous Assiento Treaty with Spain for maintaining the slave trade; nor, we fear, can any effective answer be derived from this page of history by Englishmen to meet the taunts uttered against English abolitionists that their fathers and grandfathers were all for the slave trade so long as it was remunerative, and that their zeal for freedom, equality, and justice, extending to black and white alike, was never felt until the slave trade had ceased to pay. The foundation of the colony of Georgia by Oglethorpe presents many points of resemblance to that of Pennsylvania by William Penn. Both were for universal freedom, for equal rights to all men, and for justice and amity to the Red Indian. It was with a slender force that Colonel Oglethorpe landed at Savannah in 1732. Not more than one hundred persons, including some women and children, embarked with him on board the Anne-named after the reigning sovereign-at Gravesend, in the month of November, 1731. In January they made the port of Charleston, in South Carolina, which had previously been settled by Huguenots, and in February he put into the Savannah river. The hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his landing has recently been celebrated on the spot where it took place. Of a truth, there was much in the circumstances of that celebration to gladden General Oglethorpe's shade could he have been present to witness it. After having been abandoned for more than a century to slavery of the most narrow and bigoted kind; after having given birth to Toombs - who boasted at the commencement of the American Civil War that he would read out the roll-call of his slaves under the shadow of the Bunker Hill monument at Boston, in Massachusetts-and to A. H. Stephens, who claimed that the Confederacy rested upon slavery as its chief corner-stone, the State of Georgia is today as free as Oglethorpe originally tried to make it."

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